


Arrogance & Hypocrisy

by Kablob, mylordshesacactus



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: Alternate Universe: NEWSFLASH ASSHOLE, Emotional Manipulation, Extremely Unhealthy Relationship, F/F, Gen, I'VE KNOWN I WAS REVAN THE ENTIRE GODDAMN TIME, Sith Do Not Have Healthy Relationships In General But My God, do not try this at home, sweet lord
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 06:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10530717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kablob/pseuds/Kablob, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylordshesacactus/pseuds/mylordshesacactus
Summary: "You really are a sanctimonious little hypocrite, aren’t you?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Like Pride & Prejudice, except terrible!
> 
> ...I honestly don't know why this exists. Sorry, Bastila. 
> 
> Just to reiterate: Sith Master/Apprentice dynamics are toxic and awful by default. When your "apprentice" is also your lover...yeah, just proceed with caution.

  
They were running out of time.

Bastila set her teeth and forced herself not to glance out the window, expecting to see Malak’s ship dropping out of hyperspace at any moment. Escaping, coordinating, fighting and clawing their way to the bridge had taken too long. She’d planned on being in hyperspace thirty minutes ago and even that had been cutting it too close for comfort…

She’d felt the surge of cold shadow in the Force as Malak learned of their capture, the fear and hate and anticipation. It pounded at her temples, icy anxiety winding tighter with every passing moment. _The Lord of the Sith approaches,_ it whispered. _Be warned, be ready, be afraid—!_

“We have to go,” she bit out, taking a step backward in the hopes the others would follow. Revan— _the padawan_ had already moved away from the command console, if they ran…

“Do what you have to do, Carth."

Bastila was at least reassured by the fact that Revan—that the padawan was equally focused, gaze flicking between the dying Sith admiral and the picture windows. She knew Malak was coming as well. Of course she did. Anyone that strong in the Force could feel it.

Karath was gasping on the floor with Carth standing over him, a blaster held steady between them and they didn’t have _time_ for this. Bastila’s protest was sharper than she intended. The man would be dead in minutes anyway; Carth’s vengeance would cost them their lives if he didn’t move.

“I have something to tell you,” the man rasped, and Bastila’s stomach dropped.

No, no no no. They _really_ didn’t have time for _that._ And never would, preferably. Ever.

“Carth, no,” she snapped. “Come. He’s trying to delay us.”

“Go on,” the padawan countermanded her. “You’ll always wonder otherwise.”

_“We don’t have time!”_ Bastila hissed at her. The woman didn’t even look over. Of all the ridiculous, infuriating—

Her fit of temper almost made her forget what was happening in front of her. Carth, reeling away from his friend turned enemy, brought an end to that very quickly.

“Is something wrong, Carth?” Revan’s voice was as calm and sure as a Jedi master’s.

“It _is_ true, isn’t it.” Bastila couldn’t help but wince at the resignation on Carth’s face, the betrayal, as he rounded on her. “And you knew!”

“It’s not what you think—”

“What’s not what he thinks?” Revan asked reasonably. “I believe he deserves an explanation.”

This kind of quiet ease, the lack of any indication that she might be concerned or impatient, was the ideal for a Jedi. Bastila had never—well, that wasn’t quite true, but she had only very rarely _resented_ it in a person before. She’d spoken the truth; she admired Revan, or the woman she’d become at least. For her steadiness, for how easy she made it seem to stay in control. That didn’t make it any easier to put her own mounting impatience aside at the moment. Revan acted like they were having a casual conversation on the _Hawk_ , not standing on an enemy bridge with the Sith bearing down upon them.

“He’ll get one,” Bastila promised foolishly. Blast. She was going to have to deliver now. “But please, not here, I—I can sense the Dark Lord approaching, we have to go, now. I’ll explain everything once—”

Revan, still absurdly calm and even smiling slightly, folded her hands behind her back. “The short version, then. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

There was a dark wave cresting on the edge of Bastila’s awareness, and she did not want to find out what would happen when it finally broke. There wasn’t time for an explanation, but there certainly wasn’t time to argue about it either.

She took a deep breath, and glanced one more time out the window before turning to her charge.

“Do you remember,” she said. “When I told you what really happened in the Jedi strike to capture Revan?”

Revan’s polite calm never wavered. “I know you failed to kill her, yes.”

“Well, I—I may not have told you everything, there are…” Bastila was aware she was stammering, but she’d never had time to be properly trained as a diplomat and even if she had been, she was reasonably certain this particular situation wouldn’t have been covered so it really wasn’t her fault. “It was a complicated situation, I...Revan was badly injured in the explosion. I saved her life. The Council thought it best to...that is, with so much damage, once we had her—”

“Oh, for the love of— _you’re Revan!”_ blurted Carth. “All right? You can stop pretending now!”

“She isn’t pretending, Carth.” Bastila pinched the bridge of her nose. “You were never meant to find out. With your memories already damaged the Jedi Council determined it was safest to—”

It took her a long moment to realize what the sudden hiss of an igniting lightsaber meant, the deep purple blade sprouting like an exotic flower from her midsection.

“Oh,” Revan said softly, lips brushing her ear. “I know.”

* * *

To give credit where it was due: Carth Onasi was very, very quick. He registered that Bastila had been stabbed a split-second before Bastila herself, and shouted defiance as his blaster hand came up.

To give credit where it was due: Revan was quicker.

She didn’t have to move. She’d been so careful, since coming back to herself; only ever using the Force for small things, tiny flickers of power. Forcing herself to make datapads wobble, to strike enemies like a clumsy blunt object instead of flinging a dozen of them each exactly where she wanted them to go, or stopping their hearts with a gesture. It had been like trying to harness a wildfire to light a single candle and no more.

No longer. The hiding was over. The Dark Lord was free. And the Force, so long suppressed and chained in her blood, surged at her call like a kath hound finally slipped from its leash. Revan’s eyes flashed, and Carth Onasi’s neck cracked against the bulkhead.

He was dead before he hit the floor.

Almost a shame. An ignoble end, Revan could admit that. Carth was talented and loyal, and more perceptive than most. If only he weren’t more stubborn than Mission and Jolee combined, he might have been worth trying to turn. As it was, her energy was better focused elsewhere.

Bastila made a sound that might have been anguish or pain—it was hard to tell, with her still impaled on Revan’s lightsaber.

Revan gripped the girl’s arm as her knees buckled, supporting Bastila’s weight until she could deactivate the saber. As it was the wound formed a single clean stab to the gut; it’d ruin her favorite Jedi’s day, but she’d live. Collapsing and ripping the lightsaber through her torso, on the other hand, not even kolto could fix.

Bastila’s fingers fumbled pale and clumsy against her scorched tunic. “What…?”

A little shock could be excused, but they really _were_ running out of time considering Malak’s track record regarding ships with Revan on them.

“Oh,” she said, loosening her grip and letting Bastila sag to the floor. “Did you actually think your cute little reprogramming trick _worked?_ Sorry to disappoint you.”

Sanctimonious, self-righteous little prick Bastila might have been; but she was _smart,_ and Revan could feel the spark of life as neurons finally started firing in her captive’s mind.

“...How long?”

Revan took advantage of Bastila’s mental calculations to reach out a hand and call the saberstaff from her belt. Better to avoid temptation.

“The _Endar Spire_ ,” she answered, slipping Bastila’s lightsaber into her sleeve. “Since it matters to you.”

The sharp intake of breath from Bastila told her the Jedi had expected a much later answer. Kashyyyk, perhaps, clued in by her past moment of self-awareness in taking steps to protect her greatest weapon’s location; maybe even Dantooine, proof that the Council’s concerns about training her had been accurate. Apparently it had never occurred to them that she might not lose her identity at all, that she might have reawoken under her own power.

She always _had_ said the arrogance of the Jedi would be their undoing.

Not that Revan wasn’t acutely, uncomfortably aware of how nearly their plan had worked. As best she’d been able to figure, there were between three and five solid weeks of absolutely nothing, between her “death” on her flagship and the moment she’d suddenly jolted back to awareness, dressed in a stranger’s clothes in a rank-and-file bunk on an exploding Republic starship.

Her first thought had been: _Talk about a botched rescue._ And then a Republic soldier had burst in and called her by an unfamiliar name, and…

Darth Revan had not risen by acting like a fool.

So she’d slowly taken her hand off the cheap vibroblade someone had provided her, and she’d asked enough noncommittal questions to piece together something of the personality that had apparently been running on autopilot since the Jedi got their filthy hands on her.

She would have slipped out on her own the moment they were off-planet; but she _had_ suffered injuries, after all, and being on Dantooine allowed her an opportunity for intelligence-gathering. She censored herself carefully, said no more than she could remember being told by a Jedi, was careful with her questions. Eventually she decided she might as well take advantage of the Jedi’s resources and trust to track Malak down once again. It was one thing to know roughly where the Star Forge was; but “an unknown planet hidden in the Force, located via a hyperspace route that no one knows exists” was worse than useless.

One day she would kill the Council for that. She was going to do it with her bare hands.

But that would have to wait.

For now she reached down and gripped Bastila’s hair, ignoring her cry of pain as she pulled the Jedi to her feet.

“You can walk,” she bit out. “Move.”

There was a very real chance, for a moment, that Bastila might just drop like a petulant child and make herself dead weight. Revan was entirely prepared to drag her back to the Ebon Hawk if she had to, but after a moment of simmering resentment Bastila was still on her feet. Revan chose to take that as assent, and led her off the bridge by the arm.

Bastila had a Jedi’s resilience and the spiteful pride of a Sith, and yes, she could walk—barely. She stumbled over blast-door thresholds three times; if it wasn’t for the tiny whimpers of pain she was unable to hold back, Revan might have suspected it of being intentional. Bastila’s free arm was pressed tight to her side, instinct overriding all those years of Jedi control to insist there was bleeding to staunch as Revan yanked her around corners and down passages.

At least she didn’t have to pretend not to know her way around anymore. It had been an exercise in agony, having to make a show of feeling her way through her own flagship, as if she didn’t know where the damn bridge was. She’d honestly thought her trick with the airlock would give the game away; but of course, the Jedi were so _utterly confident_ in their own infallibility…

By the time they’d gotten two decks down Bastila’s breathing was labored, and her ability to walk quickly becoming theoretical. She tripped on a dead trooper and this time she fell hard onto her knees. Revan, honestly surprised she’d lasted this long, bent down to haul her back to her feet—but stopped when she felt a tremor in the Force.

Igniting her saber and whirling around, she barely caught the saber hilt of a fallen Sith grunt as it hurled through the air towards Bastila, the two halves sputtering sparks as they continued on their arc past her and clattered to the ground.

Revan smirked down at the young Jedi whose eyes were now wide from more than just fear. “Cute,” she said, then delivered a hard smack to the side of Bastila’s head with the pommel of her lightsaber. Ignoring the girl’s cry of pain, she dragged her back to her feet.

She _felt_ space warp, somewhere outside the _Leviathan_. Felt a familiar dark-red presence swell in the Force, and bared her teeth in a hunter’s grin.

There was a long pause. Then, predictably, a faint echo of fear. Cannon fire rocked the ship in its wake: Malak was as much a coward as ever.

“I’m going to kill him,” she murmured, sparing Bastila a glance. Her grin widened. “You’re going to help.”

Whatever the response might have been, it was interrupted by a chirp from Revan’s comm unit.

_“This is Canderous. We’ve got the Hawk ready to fly—”_

“Leave!” Revan’s head snapped around as Bastila suddenly lurched forward. “Leave now, she’s—”

Revan, who had been supporting most of the Jedi’s weight, snarled and shoved her away. Bastila tripped over her own feet, clutching her stomach as she tried to catch herself on the wall and tore at the wound. She managed to stay silent, but Revan could feel her pain flaring bright in the Force.

_“What was that?”_

“We’re almost there,” Revan assured him. “We’ll get there before the armor fails.” Then, looking Bastila in the eye, she added an edge of concern to her voice. “Can Jolee meet us on the ramp? Bastila’s hurt.”

Anger and fear warred in Bastila’s eyes as Revan closed the channel on Canderous’ crisp affirmative.

“No! No, you _can’t—”_

Lightning crackled between Revan’s fingertips, but the ship was shuddering around them under Malak’s barrage; there was no time for a lesson here. She took Bastila’s tunic by the collar in an iron grip and hauled her upright again.

_Finally,_ the little Jedi was fighting her.

It was too little, too late. Bastila’s strength had been sapped by the effort of running through the ship with a charred hole burned through her gut, and the Hawk was too close for her to mount any real delaying tactics. Revan forced a side door into the hangar, shifted her grip to hold Bastila by the upper arm as she hurried them around the Hawk and toward the lowered boarding ramp.

Jolee Bindo, true to his word, ran down to meet them.

“I _said_ you’d get shot if you didn’t keep your guard up, kid,” he told Bastila even as she opened her mouth to shout a warning. He never had time to notice. Revan’s backhand was casual, an upward slash that caught him under the ribs and never stopped.

A waste, and one she felt more than a little regret for. She had nothing against the old hardwood. Enjoyed his presence, actually, more often than not. But he was as incorruptible as Carth and a much greater threat. She respected the old man too much to let him live.

Mission leapt up as the ramp retracted, and this time Bastila would not be denied her opportunity.

“Run, _run,_ she’s—”

Very casually, Revan moved her arm around Bastila’s waist. It was the kind of casually affectionate gesture the crew was used to seeing—the kind that got the Jedi so sweetly flustered. It also served to let her squeeze tightly over the raw, searing hole in Bastila’s stomach.

Somehow, the girl managed to get even paler than normal. She sagged dramatically, words stopped on her tongue as her throat closed in agony, and Revan’s grip tightened to keep her from falling as much as to silence her.

_“Go!”_ she shouted. “T3, fly us out of here, _now!_ Juhani, help me. _”_

“Where’s Carth?” Mission’s fear answered her own question. Deeper in the ship, high-pitched whines and concussions echoed through the halls; Canderous on the turret gun, covering their escape. Give it a few more minutes...

“He didn’t make it,” Revan told the girl. The shortness would serve as an imitation of grief.

_“She killed him.”_

Inwardly, Revan sighed. Bastila Shan never had been one to take the damn hint. Oh, it was what attracted Revan to her in the first place, of course; but at the moment, it was an unnecessary inconvenience.

Juhani frowned as she crossed to Revan’s side, but didn’t look alarmed. Typical Jedi; if Revan had to guess, the Cathar was assuming that she’d made a call to leave Carth behind when he couldn’t be saved. She probably wanted to counsel Bastila out of blaming Revan in her grief.

Admirable.

“What do you mean?” Juhani asked in that soft purr of hers. Revan made a mental note to both reward Bastila’s impressive show of willpower and have a long talk about the consequences of defiance, casually flipped her saber hilt in her hand, and ignited the blade across Juhani’s throat.

“Exactly what she said,” she answered calmly. “It’s up to you whether you’ll be joining him.”

* * *

The stars streaked away into the flashing blue of hyperspace _just_ as Canderous lined up his shot on that last Sith fighter.

Ah, well. More where that came from.

He stretched and cracked his back before climbing down from the turret. Honestly, if the damn seat wasn’t legally considered a torture device on twelve worlds he’d have stayed up there a while longer. This ship wasn’t nearly big enough for all the idiots the Jedi had crammed onto it and the gun turret was about the only spot a man could have a moment to himself.

The Republic spacer punk and her Jedi princess would figure that out soon, he thought wryly. That was if they hadn’t taken advantage of it already.

T3’s servos whirred as it trundled out of the cockpit. Resilient little thing, that droid. Canderous grinned and put a hand on the droid’s...head?...as he passed it. T3 whistled happily.

“All right,” he announced as he walked into the common room. “One of you better have grabbed my clothes, because…”

The others blinked at him.

A warrior didn’t live this long by not being able to read a room, and the threat assessment unfolded by reflex in the back of his mind. The old man didn’t seem to be around. Mission was pale and drawn, babbling something about Carth being dead. The Wookiee was….there. HK was pointing a blaster at everyone in turn but that wasn’t unusual, Bastila was slumped against her girl with a charred wound in her stomach, and the kid had her lightsaber hooked around the Cathar’s neck.

A gizka hopped by in the background.

“Glad you could join us, Canderous.” The kid’s voice was careless, but there was a sharpness in her eyes that caught his attention. He’d seen that look before, and the fighters it came attached to were either dangerously delusional—or exactly as deadly as they thought they were.

“I was up there for what,” he replied. “Three minutes?”

She laughed. “Well, this wasn’t the plan,” she admitted. “But Carth moved the schedule up for me.” Offhandedly, she dropped her hold on Bastila; the girl crumpled to the ground like she couldn’t even _try_ to support her own weight. “I was just announcing a change of leadership, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.”

“Respectful Correction, Master.” HK’s voice box sounded choked up, somehow. That droid was weird as hell. “This vessel’s leadership has not changed just because the meatbags on board it failed to recognize you immediately, as _some_ of us did.”

Mission was shaking her head in horror. “You—no,” she said in a small voice. “That’s not...you’re _not_ Revan, you _can’t_ be!”

_Revan._

His first instinct was to side with the kid on this one. This girl was...some short little spacer with a bit of a Force talent, sure. Charismatic, surprisingly competent—at least enough that he’d been willing to stay on when she asked. But Darth Revan? _This_ little thing? Soft-spoken and still, the quiet confidence of a warrior, and how did some Republic recruit get that kind of skill with a blade anyway? She killed as an afterthought, gave good orders evenly and efficiently, it was why he’d liked her in the first place…

“What about Taris?” Mission pleaded. “You—you helped us! You rescued those Jawas without hurting anyone, remember? And my useless brother, even! Revan wouldn’t have done that!”

Revan—all right, honestly, with every passing moment it was getting easier for him to see it—sighed and shook her head slightly.

“You and every Sith grunt in the galaxy,” she muttered. Then, “Acting like a swaggering bully when you don’t have to gains your cause _nothing,_ and creates enemies who might have served you loyally. Why shouldn’t I leave people in my wake who have reason to know that joining my side benefits them? Speaking of which.” She examined the fingernails of her free hand. “I’m still waiting.”

“Never.” Well, the Cathar didn’t hesitate; he could respect that. “I will not fall again.”

“From what I hear, you barely ‘fell’ properly in the first place,” Canderous retorted.

“You disappoint me,” said Revan. “Unthinking loyalty to an order that abused you and your trust so badly isn’t a virtue. Be a slave if you like. I would have freed you.” She tilted her head, turning her attention to Canderous. “And what about you then. Are you up for a rematch against the Jedi?”

Canderous grinned. “Please. The Jedi never defeated us. _Revan_ did. Without you on their side it won’t even be a battle worthy of my time. But it could be fun. I’ll follow you, either way.”

“You see? _This_ is how you build an empire, Mission. Corpses are safer than enemies, and allies are worth more than corpses. I reward loyalty.” Her lips quirked. “Admittedly, sometimes the reward for obedience _is_ that I choose not to slaughter your entire settlement. But compared to the alternative…”

“That’s evil.” Mission’s voice shook. “You can’t really think that! I remember what the Sith did to—”

_“Malak.”_ Revan’s voice jerked Canderous up straighter on reflex. _That_ was the battlefield whiplash of the Dark Lord who’d brought half the galaxy to heel. _“Malak_ bombed Taris, because he’s an incompetent moron with the subtlety of a mad rancor and no concept of what real power means. I thought we both wanted him punished for that? The Jedi won’t kill him.” She nudged the fallen Bastila with her foot. “They don’t _believe in it._ Isn’t that right?”

Bastila was still clutching her side and looked half dead; but she’d managed to push herself up on one elbow. She whispered something Canderous couldn’t make out.

“Right.” Revan’s lip curled slightly. “But some people deserve to have their mind raped and shredded so it can be replaced with one that’s more convenient to you. That’s fine. It’s definitely not the same as Sith brainwashing. Ethics are for other people.”

Canderous didn’t know exactly what was going on there, but Bastila flinched like Revan had twitched a lightsaber in her face.

Revan herself, it seemed, was running short on patience.

“I’ve always been a friend to you, Mission,” she said. “That only changes if you decide it will. Think about it. Your skills are valuable, you’re smart, you’re a good judge of character. I enjoy your company. I’ll place Griff under my protection. Go anywhere in the galaxy you want; you’ll have a ship, resources, tech, funding. Zaalbar can act as your bodyguard. Meet people, make friends. Write me when something interesting happens.”

“You want me to be a _spy?”_

Revan smiled. “You would enjoy it.”

“No way! I’m not spying for the Sith! And neither’s Big Z. Right, buddy?” Mission’s confidence faltered. “Zaalbar? Right?”

HK stirred. “Inquiry,” he said brightly. “Permission to terminate, Master?”

Revan gave a noncommittal hum as Juhani tensed beside her.

“Zaalbar,” she said instead, waving her hand. “Restrain her.”

Mission backed away from them. Canderous, who’d seen more than enough panicked teenagers in his time, took the opportunity to tug the blaster rifle from her grip. “Wait, what—what are you doing?”

Revan watched dispassionately as the Wookiee, making low moaning noises that were probably distress of some sort, grabbed the kid by the elbows and held her still.

“Your friend is trying to save your life,” she said, soft and dangerous. “I won’t give him another chance.”

Mission hesitated, but stopped trying to pull free. HK-47 lowered his blasters, somehow managing to look disappointed.

“Canderous.” Revan tossed something through the air; he caught it reflexively, and looked down to see the familiar shape of a lightsaber. Well, that explained why Juhani was being so cooperative, anyway. “Search her. Any tech, any tools, anything she could use to get clever. There’s a pair of binders under the console, cuff her and stick her in the airlock.”

The Wookiee moaned.

“She’ll be safe,” Revan assured him. “Unless she tries to escape, in which case HK opens the outer doors. But that will be her choice, not mine.”

There was a long pause before he reluctantly agreed.

“Good. In the meantime…”

It happened too fast for him to follow.

One moment Revan was scanning the room with a pale, broken Jedi curled up in agony at her feet. The next there was a snap-hiss and a blaze of yellow as Bastila’s double-ended saber flew to her hand. She obviously didn’t have the strength for a duel, but she didn’t have to; Revan’s lightsaber was still hooked around Juhani’s throat, and Bastila swung the saberstaff at the Sith Lord’s midsection from too close a range for her to possibly dodge.

It would have been the end of Revan for good, except that the golden blade….stopped.

They all heard the ragged gasp from Bastila as her lightsaber froze in midair, inches from Revan’s side. Then, slowly, trembling as the Jedi tried to fight it, it moved back. Revan didn’t even look at her.

As the second blade twisted gradually toward her face Bastila had the sense to deactivate her lightsaber; but she wouldn’t or couldn’t lower her hand, and there was something dark behind Revan’s eyes as the Jedi’s arm was pressed backward.

“What are you doing?” Mission asked again. Bastila bared her teeth and tried to rise, only to fall back with a cry of pain, grabbing her own wrist with fear starting to show on her face. “What are you—no, wait, don’t—”

The crack of Bastila’s arm breaking was almost, but not quite, drowned out by her scream.

Juhani’s voice wavered. “You are a monster.”

“When you’re done with Mission,” Revan told Canderous evenly before cocking her head in Juhani’s direction, “Take this one as well. HK, if she puts up a fight, shoot the kid.”

* * *

" _I’ll be having a word with Padawan Shan.”_

The words registered, sort of, but their meaning glanced off her—at least, until she felt an arm around her, slipped under her good arm and supporting her shoulders. Before she could jerk away Revan had scooped her legs up into a bridal carry and stood.

Either through the Force or from a lifetime of hard fighting, she held Bastila like she didn’t even notice her weight.

“Put me down,” Bastila hissed. Revan ignored her.

She ought to fight the Sith Lord off. Kick her or—or shout at the very least, but instead she had to grip Revan’s shoulder with her uninjured hand or risk losing her balance. Making Revan drop her would be humiliating, but also...she shrank back from the thought of aggravating her injuries any further. _A Jedi does not fear pain._ Well, fine, but she didn’t want to court it, either.

Besides. This would let her conserve her energy to resist the true tortures. The Sith were known for them—but they would not break _her._ Bastila was certain of that.

She wished it was a surprise when Revan brought her back into the starboard-side quarters instead of the medbay. That had been a foolish hope anyway.

Bastila allowed herself a single moment of weakness as she was set down, almost gently, in Revan’s bed: She _hurt._ She was tired, and afraid, and it was never meant to be like—she wasn’t supposed to have known, Bastila had always planned to tell her eventually but it had never been the right time, and she hadn’t wanted to...upset her…

Maybe the Council had been right. Her affection, her quiet envy for Revan’s confidence and decisiveness and strength in the Force, they had been a weakness after all. Perhaps if she had been honest earlier—or perhaps if she hadn’t let herself soften, become blinded by her feelings for the woman she _knew_ was Revan, maybe she would have seen the signs. Maybe she could have prevented this.

Or maybe there was never anything that could have been done. Maybe her only mistake had been not killing Revan when she had the chance.

“Give me your arm.”

The command was so unexpected that Bastila just blinked up at her for a moment. “I’m sorry?”

Revan rolled her eyes, holding up a plastoid injector of kolto with exaggerated patience. “Your arm, sweetness. Unless you want it to heal naturally, but you won’t be able to kill Malak in that condition.”

She reached out with the injector, and Bastila pulled away. She tried to ignore the sickening spike of pain from her abdomen at the slight movement.

“Don’t touch me,” she spat.

Infuriatingly, Revan just smirked.

“That’s not what you were saying two nights ago,” she murmured, sitting on the bed and jabbing Bastila’s arm with the injector. There was a painful pinch, but it vanished after a moment into a pathetically welcome numbness. Revan’s fingers wavered, and Bastila felt her broken bones realigning. It was..well, an awful sensation, honestly, and her stomach lurched with something akin to vertigo, but it wasn’t painful. “Remember? When you were _begging_ me to kiss you on Kashyyyk?”

Bastila flushed. “That—that hardly—you—that doesn’t _count!”_

“Oh yeah?” Revan’s lips twitched as she lifted the hem of Bastila’s tunic, folding it neatly just above the saber wound as she broke out a second medpack. “You kissed _me,_ you know.”

For a bizarre, irrational moment, Bastila nearly retorted that yes, well, _Revan_ was the one who’d brought tongues into the proceedings and that had been entirely unfair—she shook herself. It was too easy to fall for the trick, to see the persona she’d been in love with. But that had been a lie. That woman had never existed, had she?

“That was _not—”_ Bastila bit her tongue, and started over. “I will not be held responsible for actions taken under false pretenses. I know exactly what you have been doing. Any choices I made were based on false information, and that kind of transparent emotional manipulation—”

Her voice faltered. She hadn’t been prepared for Revan’s response to be _laughter._

“You,” she gasped after several minutes. “You—oh, wow. You’re serious. You really are a sanctimonious little _hypocrite,_ aren’t you?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” said Bastila through her teeth. She tried and failed not to glance at the kolto gel in Revan’s hand. The other woman was making no move to apply it, and that in and of itself was making the pain more intolerable by the second.

She wouldn’t beg, not even to herself, but—well, Revan could get a move on, that was all—

Revan just shook her head in wonder.

“Right,” she said. _“You_ were the one being taken advantage of. I lied to _you_ to get you in my bed.”

“Yes!” It wasn’t a complicated concept. She really didn’t understand why Revan found it so amusing, it wasn’t as if a Sith Lord would have reason to be ashamed or defensive about it. “You let me believe that—that is, I had no way of—I didn’t know you were—”

Revan’s eyebrows lifted almost to her hairline.

When she spoke, her words were clear and precise so that Bastila could not possibly misunderstand them. “You,” she said slowly, “knew _exactly_ who I was.”

Bastila’s arguments fumbled on her tongue. “That—you’re twisting my...it wasn’t...You let me believe you had lost your memories, you lied—”

“I lied to _you?”_ Revan demanded incredulously. “As far as you were aware, ‘I’ was a stitched-together identity imposed on your greatest enemy without her knowledge or consent, with a personality hand-programmed by your precious Council to be _blindly, unthinkingly obedient to you._ You had no qualms nuzzling up to _that_ and running your fingers through her hair. But no, you’re the one who was being taken advantage of, I see that now.”

The burning feeling in her stomach, Bastila told herself, was almost certainly the result of the saber wound. But it might have been shame.

Revan shook her head and pulled a sterile pad out of the medpack, squeezing a generous measure of kolto gel onto it. “Move your arm.”

Unable to think of a good reason not to, Bastila moved. The coolness of the kolto was almost as welcome as the numbing agent that went into effect on contact.

That didn’t make her grateful. It would be _obscene,_ feeling gratitude toward Revan of all people for healing the wounds she herself had inflicted. She was just...confused. It wasn’t a crime to be confused.

For a few moments, she let Revan work. Then, in a voice hesitant enough that she hated herself for it: “I was certain you were going to kill Juhani.”

Revan’s response was terrifyingly casual. “She’s not a lost cause yet. If she’d pulled a stunt like you did, though, trust me, I’d have killed her. Count yourself lucky you’re cute and I’m making allowance for your being...emotionally unstable,” she added. “The last time someone challenged me like that, he lost half his face.”

Not bothering to hide her disgust, and choosing to ignore being compared to _Malak,_ Bastila asked, “Why?”

“Because he _glassed a planet,_ why the hell do you—ah. Why _you._ Because you’re already a better Sith than you are a Jedi, and I want you at my side.” She smirked. “And I like the sounds you make.”

“Stop _doing_ that.”

Bastila didn’t expect the protest to do anything; she was taken aback when Revan held her hands up in mock defeat and went back to dabbing kolto on her wound. It was...an eerily familiar gesture, one that didn’t feel artificial.

She was beginning to face the frankly terrifying realization that Revan’s mannerisms and decisions over the last months might not have been entirely affected. That the woman who had negotiated with the chieftain on Tatooine, knelt down to the Jawa leader’s level and spoken to him like any other sentient, been so cheerfully friendly with Mission and the droids and whose charm and wit Bastila had admired on Manaan, smugly amused at how well her bond-partner was manipulating the court, had been natural and genuine.

Which meant she really had let herself fall in love with…

No, absolutely not, she wasn’t going to think it.

Anyway, it wasn’t lingering affection or sentiment that made Revan spare her life where others had been slaughtered. She was too pragmatic for that. There had to be something else, and—oh, Bastila was a fool, what _else_ could it be?

“I know what you want me for,” she informed Revan.

Revan’s lips twitched. “Mmm. Figure that out all by yourself, love?”

Bastila flushed again. “That is not what I—you know perfectly well what I’m referring to. You’ve always wanted my abilities under your control. I will not be used as a tool to grant uncontested victory to the Sith—”

“Oh, right.” Revan waved a hand carelessly. “Your parlor trick. I’d honestly forgotten about it.”

Something...fizzled, in Bastila’s brain. Like a short-circuit.

“...I’m sorry?”

Revan glanced at her. “Oh, don’t get me wrong—it’s a _nice_ parlor trick. But I think you’ve forgotten who I am. I don’t need a pretty fallen Jedi kneeling in my flagship, holding my armies together by her fingertips. I didn’t have you in the Mandalorian Wars. I left the most powerful Mandalorian army in history crushed in the dust in my wake and drove the Republic back on its heels anyway, and that was _before_ I discovered the Star Forge. Good tactics, good training, and strong leadership create an army that moves in tandem on its own. The day I depend on anything else for my victories is the day I _deserve_ to be beaten.”

Bastila...didn’t have a response to that. Ever since she was a child, her ability had been prized and feared in equal measure by the Masters, by the Council; it was her whole life. Everything she did or would do revolved around her use as the savior of the Republic fleet. Revan’s dismissal—she wasn’t certain if she felt insulted or not.

Revan finished her work on the saber wound, pressing a kolto-infused adhesive bandage to the skin and flipping Bastila’s burned tunic back down.

“As for what I want you for,” she said. “For right now? You’re going to help me reclaim the Star Forge. I want you at my side for that. Even if Juhani turns, she’ll never be your equal.”

That, at least, was solid ground. “I will _never_ place that kind of power in your hands, Revan.”

“Yes. You will.” Revan plucked another injector out of the medpack and prepared it. “Because the other option is leaving it in Malak’s. He bombed Taris to rubble because searching an entire city planet for a Jedi with every reason to remain undercover took longer than a standard week. I ripped half his face off once for doing something that stupidly wasteful. One of us _will_ control the Star Forge, Bastila. After working with the Council for so long, I’d think you’d be used to taking the lesser of two evils.”

She didn’t dignify that with a response. Revan didn’t seem to expect one.

“This is a highly illegal sedative I picked up on Tatooine,” she said, holding up the injector. “Jedi are hard to sedate, but this should keep you quiet until we land on Korriban. Your body needs a chance to heal, and you need some time to think about what you really want.” She smiled. “I have so many things to show you.”

Bastila narrowed her eyes. Her retort was cut off by the pinch of the injector against her neck.

“Ow! I...you can’t…”

“I’ve taken you under my protection,” Revan told her, still with that warm smile. “You’ll be safe until we land.”

She stood.

“Or maybe you’ll wake up with the mind of a willing Sith slave,” she said casually. “A loyal servant of my empire with no memory of ever being a Jedi. That would be kinder, wouldn’t it?”

Bastila tried to summon the energy to shout at her, but the sedative was exactly as powerful as Revan had claimed. She could barely muster the willpower to be afraid—and a Jedi wasn’t meant to feel fear at all.

Revan smiled and brushed her thumb over Bastila’s lips as she was pulled under.

“Sweet dreams.”


End file.
